18 Best keyword research tools For SEO (free and paid)
If you are trying to find the best keyword research tools for SEO, you are at the right place.
We all desire to see our creations on the search result pages, but we are well aware that it isn’t an easy task. It requires a lot of work to optimize your web pages to appear in search results, and keyword research is a crucial part of it.
To create strong content that can attract more visitors, you’ll require to perform keyword research. It can help you find the best keyword that can help you to create content having the potential to boost your search traffic.
There are plenty of keyword research tools that you can use to find out the potential keyword. However, it may be challenging to find out the best of all. Don’t worry! In this post, we’ll give you the 18 best keyword research tools from which you can choose the best. You can use it to find out the potential keyword that you can use to create strong content and boost visitors to your site.
Keyword Research Tool- what it is and its importance?
A tool that can help you to perform keyword research to discover the ideas related to your interest that people are searching online and that can help you to grow your search traffic.
Creating content that is unproductive or lacks strategy is a waste of time. It can never rank in SERP, not now nor ever. You need to research what people are actually looking for and what their queries are so that you can create content that can fulfil their requirements.
A keyword tool can help you with that.
- It can suggest the keywords and topics you can use to create content and plan your content strategy.
- It indicates whether you can rank or not for a particular keyword.
- It can tell your keyword’s stats and how they are performing.
- It recommends you the keywords and long-tail keywords related to your terms.
- It can also provide you with an insight into your competitor’s website and suggest the keywords that they are performing well.
Now, without any delay, let us move to the list of keyword research tools. After that, we’ll cover them one by one:
- Semrush
- Ahrefs Keywords Explorer
- Soovle
- Jaaxy
- QuestionDB
- Rankin
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- GetKeywords
- Serpstat
- AnswerThePublic
- Ubersuggest
- KWFinder
- Google Keyword Planner
- Long Tail Pro
- Keyword Tool
- AlsoAsked
- Google Trends
- TubeBuddy
18 Best Keyword Research Tools- Explained
1. Semrush
Semrush is a must-have tool in our list that can help you boost your SEO. Although not so cheap, it is the most advanced and can provide a complete site analysis and suggest the areas to work on.
It can provide a lot of keyword data that you can use to improve your search presence, such as keyword search volume, intent, keyword difficulty, competition level and much more. It offers a complete pack of keyword research tools.
Its keyword overview tool can give you a complete picture when you enter a particular keyword. It can tell the number of individuals searching for it. It can tell how the keyword is performing, whether attracting traffic or not and much more. It also offers a list of similar keywords that you can use and a list of organic search results that will show you your competitor’s ranking in the search result for that keyword.
In the domain overview, you can see yours as well as your rival’s website overview. It can show the organic search terms, keyword data, and other organic traffic metrics related to the domain.
Its Keyword Magic Tool shows the data related to billions of keywords. It can show the keyword difficulty and other competitive data related to the keyword and organize the keywords based on the topics, question type, search intent, etc. It can help you to explore your niche topics.
You can use its Keyword Gap Tool to analyze your competitor’s site by comparing the keywords. You can find the number of similar keywords on your competitor’s website and the keywords you haven’t covered yet.
To plan your future goals, you can find the gap between your and your rival’s site, where they are performing well.
Simply, You can determine your position against your rivals.
2. Ahrefs Keywords Explorer
Ahref is another keyword tool you can use to find different keyword ideas only by entering the term into its search box.
Although it is a famous backlink analysis tool, its keyword explorer feature provides thousands of keyword suggestions. It can provide you with profound information related to the keyword, such as keyword difficulty, traffic potential and search volume. It can precisely suggest the number of clicks a keyword can receive. Ahrefs keyword generator tool is free to use.
It can give you the keyword ideas on a platform level. You can select Google, bing, youtube and amazon to get more precise keyword ideas, and you can filter your keywords country-wise.
You can also use Ahref to peek into your competitor’s site. The keyword they are ranking on and can find ideas to create content based on the research.
It also offers you new keyword opportunities and keyword trends in search queries.
3. Soovle
Soovle is a free simple keyword tool that can suggest the keyword from multiple sources. It unites all the keyword suggestions from different sources such as Google, Youtube, Bing, Answer.com, Amazon, Yahoo, Wikipedia, etc. You can use it to get the ideas to create content that your competitors are not thinking of.
It lets you save your favoured keyword using its drag and drop option.
4. Jaaxy
Jaaxy is a free keyword research tool for up to 30 searches. It is a straightforward keyword research tool. Just enter the keyword or topic, and it will give you a list of thousands of related keywords quickly, together with basic data related to the keyword, such as search volume, potential traffic, its competition and more.
It also gives you a QSR number that suggests the number of websites attempting to rank for a particular keyword. The less the QSR, the more are the chances for the keyword to rank.
It was built for affiliate marketers. It can help you discover the affiliate programs that you can join and feature on your website.
You can find out the unique and untouched topic that can help you to boost traffic to your site. It also provides you with your rival’s website status, where they are performing well, and other data related to their sites, such as backlinks, ad placements, content structure and quality and much more.
Jaaxy is a tool that lets you manage your keywords, website, and competition.
5. QuestionDB
QuestionDB could be an alternative if you want to explore something like Answer The Public.
QuestionDB is another free keyword research tool that can offer related keywords in the form of questions that users search online.
You need to simply type in a keyword or a term in its search bar, and it will display a list of question-based keywords.
It can give you untouched, unique ideas that you can use in your content to create a strong piece and attract readers to your site.
It is different from other keyword tools as it provides you with the questions-based keywords using additional sources other than Google and Bing. It fetches the questions from throughout the web, including search engines and other sites like Quora, Reddit, Stack Exchange and more. With this wide range of question sources, you can get a broader idea of people’s intent with the particular topic.
Your content can be a hit!
6. Rankiq
RankIQ is a toolset that helps you create a blog that can get a higher ranking in SERPs. It is designed for businesses and bloggers whose main focus is to create content and blogs for their websites. It can suggest the ideas you can use in your post titles and content to create an optimized post for your site.
Like others, it does not provide a data report related to keywords; instead, it offers a keyword library that includes the less competitive and potential keywords for different niches.
You can filter the blog niche in the keyword library and select your niche to find the suitable keywords that you can use to create content.
Further, it gives you suggestions related to word count and the topics you can cover related to your keyword.
It can provide an AI SEO report and tips to optimize your content. It can provide a grade to your content and other recommendations to optimize it. At last, It will give you a green signal to your content when you cover everything.
7. Moz Keyword Explorer
Moz is a complete SEO toolset that includes a keyword explorer feature. Like other keyword tools, it does not provide a detailed statics report concerning the keywords. Therefore, it is more user-friendly.
It can simply provide the data related to the keyword you enter in its keyword planner tool without missing out on the important details you need to know. It shows the search volume, keyword difficulty, and CTR. It can also provide suggestions for a similar keyword below it.
Moz gives your keyword a ‘priority score’ and ‘organic CTR score’.
Priority score is based on other data such as CTR, search volume and keyword difficulty that can suggest whether you should focus on that keyword or not. And the organic CTR is the estimated expected clicks for the keyword if it gets ranked in the top 10.
You can perform ten queries for free per month using Moz’s Keyword research features.
8. GetKeywords
GetKeywords is a keyword research tool that follows a different approach than the other keyword tools. It is designed keeping the local SEO in mind.
It can provide you with the keyword suggestion that is more related to the
geographical location.
For local SEO, you need to pay attention to the current interest and trends that change frequently; therefore, you’ll need real-time suggestions rather than regular ones. The stored, analyzed data, even the data of past months, can not help in local SEO. You’ll require fresh, real-time data to rank in Local SEO.
GetKeywords provides you with the recommendation based on the real-time data fetched from CPC, search volume, suggestions and Audience Data to SERP.
You can set your keyword research suggestions according to the country, state, or city level for a particular keyword.
GetKeywords can help you much if you own a local business. It can save your time creating content using keywords that nobody is searching for around you. It will provide you with the related keywords people around you are looking for.
You can even filter your keywords based on your research intents, such as question-based, Video and eCommerce searches, etc.
It can offer you the bounce rate and CTR for a keyword. With this, you can determine whether to use the keyword or not and will it be worth spending time creating content using it.
9. Serpstat
Serpstat is an all in one SEO tool that also offers you a worthy keyword research platform.
It analyzes the first-page competition for your keyword and displays the leading Google search results for it.
It also displays your competitor’s graph that shows different competing sites for that particular keyword.
It gives you an overview of how they are performing. If you notice bigger sites such as Wikipedia and amazon in that list, it is highly competitive, and you should search for another keyword.
10. AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic is another different and question-based free keyword research tool in the market.
It is a goldmine of people’s interests and untapped content ideas. It delivers the keyword suggestion in a beautifully organized wheel format, and you can also get a list of them.
AnswerThePublic fetches the data from Google and Bing and autocompletes the user’s query, and presents related question-based keyword suggestions.
You can also get more detail on any suggested keyword by clicking on it. On a new tab, it will display if any content is ranking for it.
11. Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a keyword research tool for free that can offer you new keyword ideas. It can help you find long-tail keyword ideas as well as related keywords, preposition keywords, and question keywords. The tool gives you a keyword overview of search volume, average CPC, keyword difficulty, PPC competition and ideas to improvise your SEO and much more.
It has a content ideas tab that displays the contents relevant to your searched term and their overview of monthly visits, backlinks, and social shares.
You can explore Ubersuggest more once signed in. It can give you more suggestions related to SEO, keywords, daily rank tracking and more.
12. KWFinder
KWFinder is another potent tool you can use for your keyword research.
The best part is its easy to use interface, and the tool itself is very intuitive.
It can help you discover the long-tail keywords with the least SEO difficulty.
It can show you the actual search volumes and the most accurate keyword difficulty for a keyword, and unlike others, it displays it in front of the keyword.
KWFinder also let you find out what your competitors are ranking for.
It can offer you the easy to rank keywords.
Along with all these features, you can also perform local keyword research and SERP analysis. You can filter your keyword research based on location and find out the local keywords for your business.
13. Google Keyword Planner
Moving ahead on the list, Google Keyword Planner is another tool that you can use to conduct your keyword research. It is a free tool that directly comes from Google itself. It was created for the people who run their ads on google. But it is a powerful tool for SEO too.
To use its keyword planner, you will have to create a Google AD account.
After that, you can enter your seed keyword and get the data related to it and see how many searches they receive monthly and the cost required to target them.
It will also display a list of related keywords that will give you the ideas for your business.
If you are willing to create a new ad campaign, it can help you find the keyword related to your interest, and you can bid on them to show your ad in search results, websites, mobile apps and more. You can use the tool when you are willing to focus on paid ads.
14. Long Tail Pro
Long Tail Pro is a paid keyword research and SEO tool.
Once you enter your root keyword, it allows you to get hundreds of low- competitive long-tail keywords. It uses the data directly from the Google keyword tool.
Along with potential long-tail keywords, it provides the data on keyword search volume, rank value, advertiser bid, and keyword competitiveness score ( KC ). KC is the possibility for a keyword to rank on the first search result page.
It allows you to filter your results on a different basis, such as KC, search volume, etc. You can also track your keyword rank in the Rank Tracker option. Other than this, it is a tool you can use to perform Backlink and SERP analysis.
15. Keyword Tool
Keyword Tool is an alternative to Google Keyword Planner. Unlike Google keyword planner, which provides you with the keyword suggestions mainly for ads, the Keyword tool helps you find out the hundreds and thousands of long-tail and related keywords.
Unlike Google keyword planner, it lets you perform a quick search as it does not require account signup.
It utilizes diverse sources to provide unique keyword suggestions, such as Google, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Play Store, Bing, Amazon and much more. It autocompletes the data from these search engines to give you a handful of ideas.
16. AlsoAsked
AlsoAsked is a keyword tool that can help you find out the queries people generally ask related to a query. This tool clusters the questions from the People Also Ask section of Google so that you can get ideas related to your query. It helps you analyze the topic from different points of view that you can include in your strategy to answer your users’ queries.
Using AlsoAsked, you can get insight into users’ minds, how they think and what they search for.
If you enjoy writing longer blogs and content, this could help you provide the idea you can cover in a topic.
17. Google Trends
Google Trends is a free keyword tool powered by Google. It can help you find out the popularity of a search query on Google and YouTube over time. It can provide you with the keywords related to your search terms and can tell whether is it worth it to cover the topic or not. It shows a graphical representation and data of the trend for a particular search term, whether is it getting popular or losing its fame.
You can also find new opportunity keywords trending at a particular time in its recently trending tab.
You can also discover the popularity of a term or keyword in a particular region globally and find out what is getting popular in your niche that you can cover.
When you research a particular term in google trends, it presents a graph of its popularity in the past years. It then offers related terms that are currently popular to choose what to pick and what to avoid.
18. TubeBuddy
TubeBuddy is a tool for YouTubers that can help them to optimize their content, publish and promote it to expand their channel. You may wonder why we have mentioned TubeBuddy here. This is because of its Keyword Explorer option. This tab can help the creators to find the keywords and trending tags.
This can help you to conduct keyword research specific to YouTube.
It can display a keyword score that can help you analyze the competition for that keyword, and it can show you the current YouTube results for that keyword.
To conclude-
These are the best free and paid keyword research tools for SEO that you can use to improve your search presence in search results and harvest potential visitors to your site.
If you are starting your journey, you can take help from free SEO tools that are very basic but do their job well. However, later, you’ll require some most popular paid tools, such as SEMRush and Ahrefs, to improve your website’s SEO. They are a complete package of SEO suits that can guide you throughout your journey.
Lastly, we would like to say that it is important to find the best tools to include in your list. Still, other aspects of a website are also equally important to glorify in SERPs, such as your website and content structure, solid content, backlinks, internal linking strategy, as well as the user-friendly aspect of a website.
We hope this has helped you much in choosing your best keyword research tool.